Social Organization Index

Amon Zero had its beginnings in the early part of the century as a transhumanist group advocating the transcendence of mankind by the use of technology. However, following the death of their founder the group has changed over the decades into a religious cult. The change began with the second leader of the movement, Amon First, who had visions and dreams of a prophetic nature and taught the belief that, one day, human to-adult cloning and “ghost” mind emulation would be cheap enough for everyone to afford – and that by storing someone’s ghost in a biocomputer housed in the skull of their own clone humanity would thus effectively become immortal. Today, the cult’s “Archives” hold vast server banks and tissue culture freezers of dead members, which are accorded a kind of “ancestor worship”, in which prayers and incense are offered up among the humming servers. Members of the cult arrange to have their minds destructively uploaded and give a tissue sample for later cloning when they are ready to join “the blessed Ascendant”.

//HackNet is a widely-dispersed, informal community of hackers, crackers, and others in the cybernetic underground. Thriving in the grey marketplace between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, //HackNet includes dozens of different net sites all based around a cellular, peer-to-peer internet protocol structure, making it nearly impossible for authorities to track the traffic or shut the sites down. //HackNet is well-known for the ‘Kludge’ operating system and the vast wealth of hacking tools, tips, and tutorials it provides, along with a highly competitive atmosphere that says ‘if you can’t protect your data, you don’t belong’.

The Ruskin Commonwealth Society is a Victoriana clade and the owners of the Mornington enclave in Night City. Although the society is infatuated with all things Victorian, it sees them through a distorted lens based upon the works of it’s namesake, John Ruskin – among other things, that means it is a staunchly anti-monarchical group and one of its first acts was to invite the Republic of Britain to establish it’s NorCal Consulate in the enclave. Entry to the Society’s lowest ranks, which function as the enclave’s local government, is technically by merit based on a series of “civil service exams” but all too often rich Victorianans bribe their way in.